Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Americans Not So Big on Foreign Wars

From a new poll commissioned by the Charles Koch Institute:
51.1 percent of the Americans surveyed in the Koch poll believe that the next commander-in-chief should use less U.S. military force abroad, compared to 24 percent who say that Washington should use force more often. 41 percent want European members of NATO to increase their own defense spending and start carrying their own weight. 49 percent agree with the notion that the 2003 invasion of Iraq made the United States less safe, and nearly 39 percent of Americans don’t think the 2011 in intervention in Libya made any difference to U.S. security at all.

Nor is this all. 51 percent don’t want any U.S. ground troops deployed in Syria compared to 23.5 percent who are supportive of the idea. Over 63 percent don’t believe it’s wise for the United States to provide Saudi Arabia with more military support in its military engagement in Yemen, and about 23 percent want the United States to simply withdraw from the conflict altogether.
And 80 percent think we should never send troops abroad without a vote from Congress.

Obviously this is not the most neutral source, but I have seen other polls with similar results. Of course, if you turn the question around and say "Should the US President do everything possible to fight terrorism, including military action" you might get a different result.

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